The Great Man Theory
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3 months free
The Great Man Theory
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Narrated by:
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Adam Barr
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By:
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Teddy Wayne
About this listen
Paul is a recently demoted adjunct instructor of freshman comp, a divorced but doting Brooklyn father, and a self-described “curmudgeonly crank” cataloging his resentment of the priorities of modern life in a book called The Luddite Manifesto. Outraged by the authoritarian creeps ruining the country, he is determined to better the future for his young daughter, one aggrieved lecture at a time.
Shockingly, others aren't very receptive to Paul's scoldings. His child grows distant, preferring superficial entertainment to her father's terrarium and anti-technological tutelage. His careerist students are less interested than ever in what he has to say, and his last remaining friends appear ready to ditch him. To make up for lost income, he moonlights as a ride-share driver and moves in with his elderly mother, whose third-act changes confound and upset him. As one indignity follows the next, and Paul's disaffection with his circumstances and society mounts, he concocts a dramatic plan to right the world's wrongs and gives himself a more significant place in it.
©2022 Teddy Wayne (P)2022 Dreamscape Media, LLCThough highly satirical this is no exaggerated exercise in style, but a realistic and convincing depiction of a man rapidly losing himself in his convictions; convictions which grow increasingly similar to those of the more right-wing commentators he opposes. This is the novel's greatest strength: though you may grow exasperated with Paul and his increasingly extreme behaviours, you at all times understand how he has come to be this way. The social, financial, and political pressures of today's world are rendered so finely, in precise, flowing prose, with not a word wasted or out of place, that you cannot help but see all issues from multiple perspectives, and sympathise with Paul on his journey to the wastelands of online message-boards and extreme self-justifying action.
A humorous and perfectly formed trip through modern society and its difficulties, ultimately it is the sense of tragedy that lingers longest: the damage we can do to those around us when we become inflexible, resistant to change, stuck in the dream of a past that barely existed, one we could never return to even it did.
The reader was excellent too: well-paced and expressive, he was the perfect choice for the material.
The Luddite's Manifesto
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